Supe

Hi @lapomegranate, I don't think there is a standard notion of what a recruitment event should be. For instance, this school invited me to their recruitment event weekend without any interviews, and all my interviews were conducted over the course of a single day. However, for another school, I got invited to the recruitment event after I had been admitted. I think the timeline is crucial for understanding what would be expected. If you've been admitted, then the recruitment event will be to persuade you to join them; however, if it is pre-admittance, then both you and faculty are trying to assess if you can work together, so this might be like a second round of interviews with additional events such as (virtual) campus tours, chats with grad students etc. That said, compared to your previous official interview, there will be a little more onus on the faculty to convince you that their department will be good for you since you're a serious contender for admission. This is good news, congrats and good luck!

I applied to a school because they have a fantastic overall program but one of the things I struggled with even during the application was the fact that I didn't see a very obvious match in interests. I didn't expect the application to move forward because of that very reason but I got invited to their interview weekend, which will held in two weeks. I listed the faculty of interest for the interview (rather than the other way round) which confused me even more (really curious about who reviewed my application, and why they might consider me as contender for admission to their lab). In all of my other interviews, the POI and I had a perfect match in interests, so those interviews had been much easier to navigate. That said, this is a great program with stellar faculty, and I want to be able to give this my best shot! The faculty that I listed for interviews have been doing work that is adjacent to my current research interests, so when discussing my research work and aspirations, should I stick to what I've been doing so far (and how I would like to build upon that with their mentorship and expertise), or should I be a bit less concrete and more open to completely new topics? What would be seen as more promising? Since I had to select the faculty for interviews, it is evident that I would need to convince them that I would be a good fit in their research groups; however, would it be reasonable to assume that they would be interested in my research interests as well? (I ask this because the research foci/methodologies in my field tend to be very specific to faculty/groups in my field, and again there isn't a very obvious match in interests). I'm really confused about how to pitch myself, and would really appreciate any advice on this! Thanks in advance!

I made a very similar error on my application (entered the wrong graduation date for one of my degrees), and didn't notice this error until nearly two months after I had submitted it. I emailed the department as well as the school's graduate admissions coordinator with the clarification, and the department's point of contact responded nearly ten days later, letting me know that they had shared my email with the person handling the applications. I asked a few people about how this mistake might affect my chances of being considered, and they mentioned that this is a fairly small/insignificant error. Since you provided the CV and transcripts that list the correct graduation date (and have also contacted them acknowledging the error), I doubt it will be a deal-breaker. Good luck!

That's good news, you're definitely shortlisted! I suppose the faculty will be more explicit about admittance (or if the faculty plan to recommend you to admission, which means that you're almost admitted). From what I've learned, recruitment events after admittance are mostly for the faculty to persuade you to join whereas recruitment events pre-admittance would involve interviews with faculty, so you'll have to convince them (and they you) about how you would fit into the program. Congrats and good luck!

Thank you for responding, this was really helpful! I had assumed that POIs always reach out to students for informal interviews prior to these recruitment/visit/interview events (at least that has been my experience with other schools). I didn't reach out to the POIs at this school before applying, mostly because I wasn't 100% sure that I would be applying, and haven't emailed any of my POIs directly yet. One of my concerns prior to applying was that I didn't see a very obvious match in research interests, but thinking about what you said, the recruitment event format might actually be much more helpful than the alternative. Thanks again for all the advice, I was getting paranoid and almost thought that the invitation email was a mistake!

Got invited to a university recruitment event but have not been contacted by any of the POIs yet. I applied for a PhD program, so I'm really concerned that I haven't had any interactions with potential advisors. The recruitment event does include meetings with faculty (but you have to select them rather the other way round, so that is quite worrying). Would this be the same as a formal interview with faculty, or would this just be a generic undergrad style event? I'm a little confused about recruitment events in general since I got invited to one for another school after I interviewed with faculty and received an email that they will recommend me for admission.

It's the general Cognitive Science program, I didn't apply for the specialized Computational track.

School: Johns Hopkins University - Cognitive Science Type: PhD Date of Invite: Jan 15 Type of Invite: Official (virtual) visit/recruitment event For some reason, this email went right into my promotions email stack since it was sent by faculty via a .net domain – so relieved I spotted it!